Usagi Yojimbo DojoBoard

Digging back into Usagi Yojimbo after a sadly long hiatus. I just finished one of the UY Color Specials, that shows how Tomoe became Noriyuki's bodyguard. She and several other ladies of the court are armed with naginatas as part of their duties to his mother. I'm curious to know how common this was and how well they would have been trained?

They may not have exactly been bodyguards, but according to Matt Alt and Hiroko Yoda's excellent book Ninja Attack, Takeda Shingen had a large contingent of kunoichi (female ninjas), so it certainly wasn't unheard of for women to perform similar roles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takeda_Shingen